Steak: 5 Things You Didn't Know

4- The word “steak” derives from meat on a stick

Generally, when we say “steak,” we mean beef — a porterhouse, rib eye, filet mignon — but the term itself can refer to a slice of meat from just about any edible animal. Who knows, maybe even cannibals use the term.

Either way, it comes down to us from the Saxons, conquerors of the island of Britain and apparently a skilled bunch when it came to cattle rustling. Their term was steik and it referred to the basics: meat on a stick.

5- Growth hormones make an extra 700 million pounds of steak

The last thing you didn't know about steak is that when it comes to being juiced, baseball players have nothing on cows.

Called growth promotants, growth hormones or plain old steroids, cattle producers in the U.S. have about 30 FDA-approved products at their disposal to beef up their beef, and they've been doing it for the last 60 years. These products feature estrogens, androgens and progestins, and according to a University of Minnesota study, these steroids contribute an additional 700 million pounds of beef per year to the plates of hungry consumers while saving ranchers about six billion pounds of feed.